Magnum Bonum eBook

“Only here, to please his mother. My dear,
you must put this out of your head. Even if
he were very different, we should never let you marry
a first cousin, and he knows it. It was very
wrong in him to have spoken to you.”

“Please don’t let him do it again,”
said Esther, faintly.

“That’s right, my dear,” with a
kiss of forgiveness. “I am sure you are
too good a girl really to care for him.”

“I wish he would not care for me,” sighed
poor Essie, wearily. “He always was so
kind, and now they are in trouble I couldn’t
vex him.”

“Oh, my dear, young men get over things of this
sort half a dozen times in their lives.”

Essie was not delighted with this mode of consolation,
and when her mother tenderly smoothed back her hair,
and bade her bathe her face and dress for dinner,
she clung to her and said-

“Don’t let me see him again.”

It was a wholesome dread, which Mrs. Brownlow encouraged,
for both she and her husband were annoyed and perplexed
by Robert’s cool reception of their refusal.
He quietly declared that he could allow for their
prejudices, and that it was merely a matter of time,
and he was provokingly calm and secure, showing neither
anger nor disappointment. He did not argue,
but having once shown that his salary warranted his
offer, that the climate was excellent, and that European
civilisation prevailed, he treated his uncle and aunt
as unreasonably prejudiced mortals, who would in time
yield to his patient determination.

His mother was as much annoyed as they were, all the
more because her sister-in-law could hardly credit
her perfect innocence of Robert’s intentions,
and was vexed at her wish to ascertain Esther’s
feelings. This was not easy! the poor child was
so unhappy and shamefaced, so shocked at her involuntary
disobedience, and so grieved at the pain she had given.
If Robert had been set before her with full consent
of friends, she would have let her whole heart go out
to him, loved him, and trusted him for ever, treating
whatever opinions were unlike hers as manly idiosyncrasies
beyond her power to fathom. But she was no Lydia
Languish to need opposition as a stimulus. It
rather gave her tender and dutiful spirit a sense
of shame, terror, and disobedience; and she thankfully
accepted the mandate that sent her on a visit to her
married sister for as long as Bobus should remain
at Belforest.

He did not show himself downcast, but was quietly
assured that he should win her at last, only smiling
at the useless precaution, and declaring himself willing
to wait, and make a home for her.

But this matter had not tended to make his mother
more at ease in her enforced stay at Belforest, which
was becoming a kind of gilded prison.

CHAPTER XXXI. SLACK TIDE.

If...
Thou hide thine eyes and make thy peevish moan
Over some broken reed of earth beneath,
Some darling of blind fancy dead and gone.
Keble.